


Before all else, be armed

by More11a



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: 1989, Berlin my love, Character Death, F/M, Feelings, Mentions of Alcohol Abuse, Slow Burn, Spies Are People Too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 07:24:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14515353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More11a/pseuds/More11a
Summary: She's all silk sheets and ice cubes and immaculate eyeliner and all he's never wanted, really, until a very short time ago.





	Before all else, be armed

**Author's Note:**

> David loves Lorraine, David loves Lorrai-haine...   
> For quite a dark story, I had an infinite amount of fun writing this. 
> 
> Title by Niccolò Machiavelli because yes, I'm cheap like that. *

She's all silk sheets and ice cubes and immaculate eyeliner and all he's never wanted, really, until a very short time ago. 

He's all whisky stains and cigarettes in the cracked dirty mirrors that reflect his misery thousandfold, lining the walls of the lift in a run-down apartment building which reeks of mould and piss. He doesn't even notice. 

David knows that chemistry is a dangerous thing – one drop too many of the wrong substance, and it all goes up in flames.   
Maybe he likes it up in flames.   
He is a firm believer in „choose your drug“, and Berlin offers a vast array of vices to choose from. 

The lift stops. He rubs a freckled hand over his face, winces when he remembers too late that he's sporting an impressive black eye. A gift from yours dearly, a Broughton signature. Maybe hiding in the hotel lobby and having her sock him in the face with a telephone wasn't his brightest idea, but, as with anything that's bad for you, the thrill was quite worth it. 

Headquarters say he should lie low, but really, screw headquarters. The game is always on, and he's been playing it for far too long. This city is bleak and grey and dirty and has all the right poisons in all the right places. Except for decent tea, maybe. Everything happening at once, all over the place. And, God save the bloody Queen, he loves his job. 

Here he is, caught in his wonderland of self-destruction, and for another split second, he imagines what it would be like to be caught up in _her_ , in all that glacier-cold grace. She's the best the office had to send, maybe the best they've ever had, and it's the first time in forever he doesn't think of himself first, the secret king of Britain. 

They are waiting right outside on the landing, and before he's even thought about it, he's stubbed out his cigarette in someone's eye and smashed them about good with the butt of his gun. The night was criminally short, but his blood feels like battery acid and suddenly, he could take on the world. The job does that to him, all the strains of living like he does forgotten. She's there, too, has done a bit of the dirty work already, and next thing he knows, they'll probably start competing in who's taken out more of the bad guys than the other. He's not competed against a woman in a long time. There haven't been any agents like her, though. 

He'd fuck the French operative without thinking, would love to see his own pale skin against her olive, but it would be too easy.   
_She_ 's a different story. There's nothing easy, just a lot of complications, of the very seductive kind. 

Right now, she's choking one of the guys while biting off his ear, looks like, so he takes the chance to land a few good blows in his midsection. Like pieces of a puzzle, and bloody hell, it's _fun_. (It always is, but sometimes less, sometimes more). Secrecy's not really his thing, he's always loved a good hands-on fight, particularly with people who tell him he's too short and/or too drunk to be an actual agent. 

Surely, she's good at choking in other fields of life as well. Handcuffs too, probably. Leaving way too early in a rustle of fabric and cold draught and the bitter taste of Stoli on the rocks and regret and other atrocities. The most beautiful of tragedies, and it's right there, he can almost taste it, can almost reach out and pluck it from thin air. 

They spent the night before yesterday in a bar, pink lights and Neue Deutsche Welle, keeping four eyes instead of two on a pair of Russians, and they got good and drunk in the name of national security, or at least he did. (The fineries of pretense are far from his mind when a chance like that presents itself).   
That might have been when it happened. 

Funny thing is, he doesn't really know what to do with it. Go with the flow, steal a kiss from deadly danger, fuck everything else, sure – but this time is different. David might act like he doesn't care much if he lives or dies, but in fact he _does_ , and God, the Berlin underground is _on fire_ right now, that damn list is still out there – the one that could mean tea with the Queen or his head bashed in – and Lorraine Broughton showed up unexpected like an extra queen in a chess game that he thought he knew so well. Oh, he can play with lots of hidden figures, too. He's not going to lose his head over something this silly... or is he? 

This is really not how it was supposed to be going down, not this far from home. Sometimes he forgets where home is, that not everyone is living in this divided city, be it on the nightmarish side or the slightly less nightmarish one. You don't make your home in places, or people, it's the first lesson he's learned in his training, one that was never on the agenda but got conveyed nonetheless. Because feelings will only get you killed sooner rather than later. 

He wakes up and she's still there, and he knows right away that it's a dream. The hotel sheets are white and crisp and smell like they never would at his own place, and she hasn't even left, so it can't be real.   
Knowing this is not the worst thing. The worst thing is wishing it was. 

He wakes up again and the streets are slightly damp, with street lights and neon signs throwing colourful reflexes across the asphalt. She looks like an illustration, standing out against the wet rainbows on the floor in her all-black coat and pale face and silver hair, and she's so beautiful that it's hard to breathe. 

From afar, he can hear the buzz of thousands of excited voices, fireworks and the horns of cars. There is electricity in the air, promises of things never imagined, a shared future of what should have been united all along... a future at all. The red and blue stars exploding overhead sound like distant gunshots, and he doubts all these people will be happy for long, because people never are. 

There's a cold weight in his hand now, one more gunshot which sounds like just another salute in this night of celebration, and obviously he's not the slightest bit out of his depth when it counts. He's not lost the game this time. 

Destroy your home in people. Kill what you love. 

\---

**Author's Note:**

> * I know it's actually a misquote and the great philosopher never wrote this, at least not literally. I also know that people attribute it to him and it just fits very nicely.


End file.
